A Guide to the Class Warfare of Presidential Politics

April 13 (Bloomberg) -- Everyone says there’s a class war
going on in the U.S. If so, it is, at least so far, a war of
words.

It’s also a war in which a principal tactic is to accuse
the other side of fighting a class war, while denying that
you’re fighting one yourself. Meanwhile, everybody claims to be
on the same side: the side of the people, against the
aristocratic elitist snobs who … where did I park my tumbrel? In
this war of words, certain words take on a special weight or
meaning. Here are a few:

-- Elitist. The verbal class war is like a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey (or elephant, as the case may be). The goal
is to pin the other side with the label of “elitist.” In my
opinion -- purloined from writers such as Thomas Frank and
Thomas Byrne Edsall -- conservatives continually gin up an
essentially phony cultural class war over social issues, to
distract people from the economic class war that the wealthy are
winning.

-- Buffett Rule. President Barack Obama is making this a
centerpiece of his campaign. Originally proposed by Buffett
himself, this rule holds that Warren Buffett should pay a higher
tax rate than his secretary. And, more to the point, Mitt Romney
should pay more than the 13.9 percent he did pay on his 2010
income of $21.6 million. Specifically, Obama proposes a minimum
tax of 30 percent on all incomes over $1 million.

Lucky, Not Evil

Thirty percent is a perfectly reasonable tax rate on
incomes over a million -- even if the recipients are sainted
small businessfolk. Whether 30 percent constitutes class warfare
depends on the rhetoric that goes with it. People who make more
than a million a year are not evil. They’re just lucky. Obama’s
rhetoric has largely avoided cheap shots that imply otherwise.

But there’s a second problem with the Buffett Rule, as
practiced by Obama: It lets too many people off the hook. As the
right-wing media love to point out, it would only bring in about
$4 billion a year, or about one day’s worth of the federal
deficit.

Effective class warfare requires drawing a line and
choosing a side. All this talk about millionaires effectively
moves the line from $250,000 income a year (the level below
which Obama has promised not to raise taxes) to $1 million (the
level below which you don’t have to worry about the Buffett
Rule). Politically, the more people on your side, the better.
But economically, it makes the war nearly pointless.

-- Soft Side. This is not a reference to luggage (though it
may involve some baggage). A soft side is something that
presidential candidates -- especially a rich candidate -- need
to have, and that Romney is widely felt to lack. A soft side is
evidence of personal vulnerability. Poor guy, everything has
always gone well for him. He’s had no opportunity to suffer. Or,
much worse, he may have suffered but won’t talk about it. This
is downright un-American.

A refusal to reveal his soft side may have been the only
evidence we have that there is something Romney won’t do or say
to become president. Romney says frankly that if suffering is
what you need, he’s not your guy.

C’mon, Mitt -- this is no time for stoicism. His wife, Ann,
has multiple sclerosis and they seem to have handled it as well
as possible as individuals, as a couple and as a family. They’ve
been playing it down, but that’s got to stop. And we need more
anecdotes like the ones in the Washington Post this week about
how Romney and his sons once rescued some people and their dog
from a capsized boat, and about his work counseling neighbors as
a lay pastor of his church. Rescuing the dog may counteract the
only personal thing people do know about Romney, which is that
story about strapping his caged dog to the top of the car.

Just Marvelous

-- Marvelous. Obama actually started this one, mocking
Romney for describing the Republican budget proposal as
“marvelous.” Obama said it’s a word you don’t often hear
describing a government budget proposal, or indeed at all.

Marvelous is not really such a rare word. But it does have
a certain trivial, epicene quality that one associates with rich
people and was not what Romney was trying to convey. (Remember
the Billy Crystal character on “Saturday Night Live,”
Fernando, with his tag line, “You look mah-velous”?) Romney
should have said the Republican budget was “awesome.”

-- Harvard. Romney said last week that Obama “spent too
much time at Harvard.” This Harvard, in contrast to the real
Harvard (well, as partly or somewhat in contrast to the real
Harvard) is a place where people get indoctrinated with a lot of
fancy left-wing theories and purged of any common sense or
empathy with ordinary people that they might once have had. The
laughably obvious trouble with this remark is that Romney
himself spent four years at Harvard -- one year longer than
Obama -- and got two Harvard degrees (law and business) as
opposed to Obama’s one (law).

How could Romney say such an idiotic thing about Obama,
given his own scandalous record of time spent at Harvard? Did no
little voice in his head tell him, “Don’t go there”? Perhaps he
observed how, in 1988, George Bush the Elder successfully used
Harvard as a bludgeon against Michael Dukakis, even though Bush
himself had gone to Yale.

Nevertheless, the fact that Romney thought he could play
the Harvard card again suggests that he really will say anything
to get elected. Or that it’s Romney, not Obama (as some
Republicans have said), who gets in trouble when he departs from
the teleprompter. Or possibly that he has bottomless contempt
for the voters.

In the end, the voters don’t actually seem to share the
thuggish anti-intellectualism implied by attacks on a rival
presidential candidate for the sin of having attended one of the
world’s great universities (and one of America’s great
ornaments). Among the past four presidents, there are five Yale
or Harvard degrees. To be sure, this is no guarantee of
intelligence or wisdom. George W. Bush has one of each.

(Michael Kinsley is a Bloomberg View columnist. The
opinions expressed are his own.)

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.

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